Having, as Kline notes in her warm valedictory acknowledgements, taken 30 years to get through second and third grade, Harry Spooger is overdue to move on-but not just into fourth grade, it turns out, as his family is moving to another town as soon as the school year ends. 7-10)Ī long-running series reaches its closing chapters. Share with special readers it’s well worth the effort. Younger kids will likely miss the many references to classic films and other inside jokes, while older readers might have the tragically mistaken impression that this is beneath them. Of course the kids succeed-the only real mystery is whether their adventure will find an appreciative audience. The plot is deliciously outlandish, featuring an undercover caper complete with a hidden safe, grappling hooks made of paperclips, a classmate who just happens to be a hypnotist and a broken statuette with (real) emerald eyes. Fleischman’s characters verge on caricature-the problem-solving narrator is a clever boy nicknamed Einstein, his friend Junkyard collects cast-off items from everywhere and the ominously named Miss Breakbone delights in tormenting her students-and Roberts’s watercolor-and–pen-and-ink illustrations, reminiscent of Edward Gorey’s work, exaggerate their quirky qualities. Sound familiar? Maybe so, but readers have never seen the story play out quite this way before. A group of underachievers engages in a battle of wits with their unsympathetic teacher and emerges triumphant.
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